>exodus of right-libertarians to various flavors of nationalism.

How does a libertarian become a nationalist? Trump sure seems to facillitate "USA pride" but his politics and economics are not that libertarian at all. How can nationalistic pride win over what I thought was the center of the libertarian philosophy?

There is a fundamental problem, some would say contradiction, in libertarian reasoning: if you have an open libertarian society with open borders, non-libertarian inclined people who are none the less interested in the prosperity of libertarian societies can move in and eventually destroy that libertarian society.

An internally libertarian society with strong immigration control solves this problem and would be called "nationalist" by most traditional libertarians.

This applies to any ideology: if you have an X society, non X people can join and destroy X society.

With the caveat that most Xs are not open, thus no contradiction by closing society X. So only libertarianism suffers from this contradiction.

In addition to the sibling comments, there's also the critique of libertarianism as inherently being for those who have "made it." As it, it is easier to agitate for less government regulation and no social welfare net, if one does not benefit from such. And so libertarianism becomes a cover for protecting one's status of privilege. Thus, a shift to "traditional" conservatism which protects that privilege, as typified by nationalism, would be natural for a disgruntled libertarian.

This is one critique that has been made and is of course debatable. It's important to not simply evaluate a political ideology by its tenets, but also the demographics of its supporters, to understand the "culture" that grows around a belief system. We often do the same to religions, after all.

> In addition to the sibling comments, there's also the critique of libertarianism as inherently being for those who have "made it." As it, it is easier to agitate for less government regulation and no social welfare net, if one does not benefit from such. And so libertarianism becomes a cover for protecting one's status of privilege. Thus, a shift to "traditional" conservatism which protects that privilege, as typified by nationalism, would be natural for a disgruntled libertarian.

Yeah, but its a product of the right/authoritarian side of the libertarians.

The left-leaning libertarians who tactically vote Democrat are fine with safety nets:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/17/1314751/-13-Tenets-o...

I'm not sure if they're right in the sense of authoritarian (though certainly the more authoritarian ones make it easier to jump to libertarian). I would think they're right in the sense of being more in favor of unfettered corporate power. Anarcho-capitalism.

> How does a libertarian become a nationalist?

Right-libertarians in the US already generally were nationalists (nationalism is a very common, if not defining, element of the right-wing orientation), and generally had the least opposition for government action in the same areas where authoritarian nationalists tend to focus on preferring government action, which is why lots of right-libertarians have always been within the Republican fold rather than voting for the Libertarian Party.

I would argue that it is the right's embrace of authoritarianism rooted in nativist and nationalist (some might even say racist) sentiments that pushed libertarians to the left, which is traditionally the sphere of people who have been historically oppressed or just want to be left alone.